


Pomegranate

by psychoduck



Category: Sharp Objects (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Gen, Other, Unhealthy Relationships
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-31
Updated: 2019-01-31
Packaged: 2019-10-19 18:58:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,691
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17607071
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/psychoduck/pseuds/psychoduck
Summary: Camille couldn’t really understand it, not at first. But she was close now, closer than she had ever been. And it did not escape her attention that it was Amma who had found her, not the other way around.





	Pomegranate

**Author's Note:**

  * For [themelodymaker](https://archiveofourown.org/users/themelodymaker/gifts).



> I own nothing. Really.  
> Also, Steph made me do it.

"Don't tell mama."

The wind would sometimes softly whisper in Camille's ears, chilling her to the bone while firing it up every word etched in her skin, her very own danger alert system. But it would be all for nothing, just her brain playing fucked up tricks with her memories. She knew that, her mind was sane any longer. And yet, every single time it happened, Camille would turn around in blind panic eager to see, even after all those years, a glimpse of those bright green eyes staring deadly back at hers. Only for her to find nothing there. Nothing but the odd, eerie sound of the wind against the glass windows. Nothing but the growing despair she could feel physically growing between her ribs where her heart was supposed to be - but at this point? She wasn't sure of anything anymore.

Camille had last seen Amma five years ago. During that damn sunny afternoon when everything went to shit pretty much at the same time. Once Mae’s body was found hidden neatly behind a dumpster, the police raided Camille’s place, examining every nook and every shelf, not leaving a single piece of hair behind. They took the dollhouse as evidence and Camille was briefed by a different investigator every week for over a month. She never entered her old room again, except for that final time, when she held a tooth in her hands, when everything fell apart, when her little sister became a murderer.

Every news outlet wanted a piece of the juicy story of the month. An entire family of killer women. Yes, the whole family. Because in the public’s opinion, Camille was too much of a strange person to not be suspicious and the whole ‘yeah, ma’am, this is America and people like her have no place here among us god fearing folks, that woman needs to be charged with something’ speech was getting on her nerves, so eventually, Camille moved out to Boston.

She told Curry she needed a change of air, but they both knew that was far from the truth. Camille was obsessed. Not a single day went by where she didn’t search for Amma’s face in a group of pretty teenagers or maybe just a blonde girl alone reading about greek goddesses in a bench. She would scavenge through news report, desperately hoping to find a mysterious killer with a preference for teeth. Much to her dismay, she never did. Amma had vanished out of thin air.

She ran off that afternoon. Camille just didn’t have it in her to turn Amma to the police and Amma knew that. They both somehow loved each other in their own twisted ways, maybe a little too much to simply turn against each other like that. Amma assembled a few items in a backpack, kissed her sister on the cheek and took off. Like it was normal, like when she used to do when she went out to the library or the park.

There was something else that propped up the change: Camille couldn’t bear to live close to Mae’s mother any longer. Not without feeling a profound sense of guilt and shame, not without feeling the need to just slit her wrists any given day, as if her life could somehow outbalance the void left by Mae. As if death could be a worthy enough price to pay.

Almost a year after Mae’s death, it was her own turn to take off.

Camille considered moving to Seattle for a while, Frank had a friend working in a newspaper that could give her a meaningless job, but she was certain that Amma was somewhere else. That knowledge ate Camille alive a little more every day. Amma was out there, waiting to be found – by her and no one else. It was just another one of Amma’s sick games, just another dance of death involving only the two of them and maybe, whoever else got in their way.

* * *

 One windy night, Camille came back home - as if she could call the empty loft she rented as such –, her skin on fire, screaming for a good and warm bath water soak after having worked in that dead end job of hers. It wasn’t that bad, her job, she would spend her days in a small but comfortable cubicle, editing and proof-reading political articles for a magazine. The pay was good, but the writing was soulless and she ached for the day when words would once again vibrate in front of her, like fireworks bursting in the dark of night.

It made her need even more for the numbness alcohol provided and yet, since that feverish night in Wind Gap many years ago, she had not drank a single drop of it anymore. _No more poison_ , she thought. Still the glimpses of small blue bottles filled her dreams at night, like they were all mocking her, tempting her with the illusion of all the mama's love they contained. Sometimes Camille missed that illusion.

She took a good look outside her window, like she did it every time, at this point it was just routine. The night was dark as hell and it seemed like a storm would start pouring down at any moment. _‘Hellfire’_ nagged at her back, begging to be written in crimson blood. Camille ignored the impulse and turned around, instead of her own flesh, now she was used to writing in the walls, in thin blue elegant paint, pretending those same walls could contain every monster and ghost inside her within their limits. As if Camille could leave every bad omen and every bad memory at home, all of them imprinted right in front of her as a puzzle on the verge of being solved. As if she wasn’t looking for Amma in the streets; or in the edges of wooded areas; or outside her window. The Woman in White, her very own Amma in White, haunting her for the rest of her life.

She was obsessed, all right.

Camille turned on the TV, just for the sake of some background noise while she read an article. Some random show was on air talking about old investigations. After a while, she heard the word Missouri come up and it got her attention. Would they talk about the murderous women of Wind Gap? They always did, she thought. The Preaker-Crellin clan sort of became urban legends, the real stuff that nightmares were made of: alluring women that would feed you poison while ripping out your teeth during sleep. And you would ask for more.

_More, Mama._

_Such a good girl._

But it wasn’t about them. Instead it was some old case that happened in Missouri about the disappearance of a random woman and how her husband was almost arrested, turns out she had been kidnapped by her ex and killed the psycho rapist pig in order to survive. That’s just how things were. Sometimes you had to become a murderer if you want to survive out there. Camille wondered if that woman’s husband looked at her any different after learning what she had done, what she went through. Camille wondered what happened to Adora in order for her to start poisoning the lives around her, what tickled her enough for her to say ‘I have to kill or else I’ll die’, what pushed her over the edge.

‘cause she certainly looked different to her when Camille learned the truth about Marian. As did Amma, but then again, things were not the same, were they? Camille could only blame Adora. Maybe it could’ve been easier if she just blamed Amma for what she had done, but all she could see was her sister spinning around with her in her mom’s yard, smiling so damn wide to her that Camille felt it resonating in her soul. She wasn’t a monster then. None of them were.

_I love you._

_I can’t remember being this happy._

She avoided her ghosts most of the days, but once in a while, in dark nights such as these, she couldn’t help but close her eyes and listen to their voices while floating around all those memories. Marian’s cute blonde curls shining in the morning sun; one of Alice’s rare real smiles; Amma sleeping like the dead next to her; hell, even Jackie and Adora dancing awkwardly in a porch. They all seemed so very alive in her mind, unlike her. Camille felt as if she didn’t exist anymore, only a broken body struggling to move forward nowadays, waiting for the one thing that could prove to her that she was still alive, that she was still real, she was still made of flesh and blood and pain. 

Camille opened her eyes once again, staring at nothing in particular. A corner of the old couch she bought on craigslist, the uneven pattern of the dark floor tiles, the flickering light bulb she needed to change, a brief glimpse of the white, pristine, untouched wall –

Except that it wasn’t any longer. There written in scratchy black cursive: POMEGRANATE.

Amma.

She had been there. In her home. Touched the very same words Camille wrote in the walls, felt the soft texture of the bed sheets, maybe even sat for a while and read some book quote out loud. Maybe, just maybe she was still close enough for Camille to find her, any wisp, any scent, anything. But Camille couldn’t find it in herself to move a single limb, for there it was, next to the freshly marked word in the wall, a tiny piece of paper covered in Amma’s handwriting.

Camille picked it up from the floor with trembling hands and tearful eyes.

_So saying, Minerva, goddess azure-eyed,_

_Rose to Olympus, the reputed seat_

_Eternal of the gods, which never storms_

_Disturb, rains drench, or snow invades, but calm_

_The expanse and cloudless shines with purest day._

_There the inhabitants divine rejoice_

_For ever.¹_

Camille couldn’t really understand it, not at first. But she was close now, closer than she had ever been. And it did not escape her attention that it was Amma who had found her, not the other way around. Once again, that girl had found a way to lure Camille back into her web and damn her if Camille wasn’t willingly falling for it once more. Because deep in her gut, she knew that Amma had attracted her back home before, she could see Amma's true intentions behind every teeth she ripped out with a joyous scream.

That night, Camille couldn’t fully sleep. Every shadow that crossed her vision, every spark of light in the thunderous sky could be Amma and that served her well as a way to keep alert, to stay awake. When she’d become too exhausted to fight off sleep, Camille would dream, all of them back in the old house, wallpaper no longer painted arsenic green but blood red dripping down, Adora dancing in the background while swinging a crying, sickly Marian back and forth, Amma in her white dress braiding Camille’s hair into a freshly made flower crown; another queen for the underworld. There were no open doors, no way out for they were all dead inside. Camille would always wake up after reaching that conclusion. In the next day, she called in sick for the first time since the move to Boston.

* * *

 Camille waited to see if Amma would appear again, but she didn’t, truth is, she didn’t come back for a whole week. Not with Camille in there at least. Once Camille caught on to that, then things moved much more smoothly. She would wake up, leave for work as usual, search for hidden meanings in Amma’s little notes between breaks, because she was certain that all those words were trying to tell her a story, only to come back home and find another word etched in her wall along with a brand new piece of stark white paper waiting to be read over and over again. That went on for months and Camille often wondered when Amma would finally show herself, as if she had become an entity at this point, somehow summoning herself in and out of the loft. Just another one of Camille’s many ghosts.

She could feel more and more that she was being watched, observed and stalked like a prey, like a pig waiting in line at her mom’s slaughterhouse. Camille just wasn’t sure if it was Amma or the police waiting for her to deliver what they so eagerly wanted. She had to admit, the police becoming an option made her anxious, she wanted to find Amma before them, she longed to care for Amma, to never fail her again. Because she felt that she had failed Amma in many ways, before they even knew each other, before they were even born. In times like that, she could almost taste in her tongue the bittersweet medicine Adora used to feed to her girls, the flavor of the sickness consuming her from the inside out, melting across her brain like butter.  _Illness sits inside every woman, waiting for the right moment to bloom_. Those thoughts always made her hurry up home. _I just need another note, just one more and I’ll be fine, just one more or else I’ll die_.

Most days it would just be a single word left by her new personal ghost, such as _lightning_ , _mercy_ , _sickle_ , _dethrone_ , _ocean_. In others there would be a sentence or two: _Power drove mama mad, Jupiter. She devoured us in her madness, we’re in the belly of a shark_.

 _Maybe Amma has gone mad after all_ , Camille would think. _But still, so have I, maybe she really is telling me a story. I just have to wait for her to finish it_.

_Bad things are gonna happen to you and you can’t stop ‘em, you can’t do anything, you just have to wait._

Camille waited. That night in her hands, Amma’s final letter:

_Oh, my Jove,_

_The sister taken from me,_

_In a sea of sorrow_

_Drowned while suckling poison at her breasts_

_Devoured at birth_

_Still circles around Saturn’s orb_

_Awaiting the sweet punishment of death_

* * *

 Camille woke up in a jumpstart. This time it wasn’t a dream. She knew, she just knew. Right there, within the shadows of her room. The Woman in White. Amma.

“Mille.”

A tiny whisper of her name being said was the only thing to disrupt the silence. Time had stopped, she was sure they weren’t even breathing anymore. Camille sat upright and took a good look at her sister. Amma seemed a little taller, more menacing, more beautiful and more dangerous. Right then, she smiled and Camille could almost see the wicked animal behind it, like Amma was some sort of predator. Yet, there was nothing for her to fear. Camille knew that deep in her body.  

“Amma, I know that story. You were telling me the story of Cronos, weren’t you?”

“Yes.”

Amma, like a scared little kitten, quietly came closer to the bed, so close indeed they were almost touching.

“He usurped his father’s throne and devoured his children as soon as they were born. Zeus brought him down and imprisoned him on Tartarus.”

As Camille finished talking, a wide-eyed Amma sat on the bed, right in front of her older sister. Just a few more inches and they could bump their heads together as they did one time, many years ago. Right after that blood pact that bonded them to each other for life.

“Cronos killed his father with the stroke of a sickle, pretty violent stuff, huh? Took all that power only for himself, then because he was too much of a son of a bitch, he devoured all of his children so they would not do the same to him. But he couldn’t devour Zeus, so Zeus ran away, one day Zeus came back and just did it, he knocked him stiff. He came and he took and then he made him bring all his devoured siblings back to life and then sent his own dear ol’ papa to exile where he was to be chained for eternity. Can’t you see, Mille? You’re Zeus, my Zeus, my savior.”

Amma said it rapidly, clearly feverish. _How long has she been like this? Like a wild wolf waiting to be petted? Like a sick child in need of comfort?_ , Camille thought.

“I’m not Zeus, Amma.”

“Yes, you are. You banished her, Mille. You came and you took. She has no power left. She’s in exile now. She can’t love us from there, she can't love us from that far.”

“That’s not a victory, Amma. We are not goddesses. This isn’t some kind of fairytale. We didn’t win anything.”

“I didn’t say that, Mille. Oh, no, this isn’t a fairytale. This is a greek tragedy, sis.”

“What are you doing, Amma? What are we doing?”

Amma never answered her, instead she just kept going.

“She dethroned Joya with her very own personal stroke, you see, she become a mother. She gave birth to you and suddenly, Joya had no power over her anymore, so she had to go. She killed Joya, Mille. She became master of the time over Wind Gap - where everyone was just so inferior to her, even us. We were just tiny little things seeking scrambles of affection at her feet, obeying her, killing for her, dying for her and for what? The only thing she ever wanted was digest us slowly in her belly, to keep us to herself, never fully eaten, never fully alive, nor dead, always somewhere in between, always drinking her poison like it was meant to keep us alive, like it was the only way she could ever love us. But not you Mille, no, not you. You took the power from her but you didn’t want it, you didn't use it and it’s okay, it doesn’t matter, because you brought us back. You made her bring us back, she had no choice left once you chained her forever.”

Now it was all starting to make sense to Camille. Somehow in the back of her mind, in some obscure, morbid memory, a final piece of the puzzle started to unravel.

“Marian’s name means Sea of Sorrow, did you know that? That’s appropriate, right? 'cause she only knew sorrow in her lifetime, all those tears could've formed an ocean. So she gets to be Poseidon then, goddess of her own oceans, goddess of her own sorrows. But me, oh…”

_What?_

“Remember that night when I told you I was Persephone?”

 _Yes, how could I ever forget? You offered me the pomegranate and I took it without asking, without thinking, for you_ , Camille thought. 

_I’m Persephone, queen of the underworld._

“I lied to you, sis. I’m Hades. I run hell, Mille. I’m stuck in hell and I can’t leave. I hurt, that's all I know. I see you, up so high, so beautiful, but I can’t leave this place I’m in. We can’t exist, Mille. Not like this, never like this.”

And all Camille could see at that moment was once more the poisoned girl with flowers in her hair that cried so beautifully over an uneaten piece of cake. It broke her heart all over again.

“No, but we can disappear. We can vanish.”

“You won’t leave me?”

“I won’t fail you again. I left you one time and I’m so sorry. I left you to be devoured by her.”

 _I left you there with her_.

“You had to, you see? One always has to leave in order to come back to save the others and it had to be you, don't you see that you were the only one of us that ever stood a chance against her?”

“But at what cost, Amma? I couldn’t save Marian, I couldn’t save you. I couldn’t even save myself. She got us all in the end. Mama’s blue got us all.”

Amma frowned upon hearing those words as if she only grasped reality while hearing them out loud. Her face got red and her eyes were filled with unshed tears, a mirror image of Camille. They never looked more alike.

"Then I guess we never really left that house, Mille. We're still there, locked in, screaming for Mama's love, chained to her forever."

"We never had a chance, Amma. None of us did. There is no more escaping for you and me, we're anchored to each other, but not to her. Not anymore. We can try to survive together, can't we?"  

Sensing the story, their story had finally finished, Camille tightly embraced her younger sister after that, as she used to do it most nights when Amma couldn’t sleep. Not until that tender moment did Camille realize how much she missed that. The need for touch coming from someone else that wasn’t just her.

“No, we can't. I'm sorry. They’re coming here, Mille. I brought them here.”

_No, it was I who led them to you. I’m sorry._

“Then we don’t have a lot of time, c’mon.”

* * *

It was Camille’s turn to enter the woods holding the hand of the Woman in White. Never to been seen again, oh, how wonderful that sounds. Amma led her by the hand through the thick forest fog. With each step, they both, it seemed, would shed another layer of themselves, leaving it to fester at the ground every weight they could no longer carry with them from that moment forward: their childhoods, their traumas, the toxic memories, every last drop of Adora’s poison, every stupid mistake, every grave error, every single body in their wake, every dead girl, every fragment of teeth. Camille was sure that, sometime during that night walking among the trees when neither of them was feeling anything anymore except for the growing deathly cold, Marian held both sisters in her tiny arms as she welcomed them into her own little piece of existence. Always just the three of them, banished for eternity, taking turns on that old swing, laughing loudly through the long endless night.

**Author's Note:**

> Sorry for all of you that had to read another dumpster fire from yours truly. Once more, feel free to send love, hate and memes.
> 
> ¹ Quoted from Homer's Iliad.


End file.
